Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2016
Vermont Journalist and Former al-Qaeda Captive Reflects on His Ordeal; Straight Out of College, Two New Reps Prepare to Serve; Inmates in the Kitchen for Farm-to-Prison Program
Cover Story
Former al-Qaeda Prisoner Theo Padnos Reflects on His Ordeal
On October 20, 2012, Theo Padnos made a risky decision that nearly killed him: He walked calmly across an olive grove in Turkey with three young men he trusted, ducked through a barbed-wire fence and disappeared into the maw of Syria’s bloody civil war. The freelance journalist from Vermont thought he was going to interview…
Obituary: Brendan Ward Vittum, 1973-2016
Brendan Ward Vittum, 43, of Byfield Mass., died November 26, 2016, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Death was a result of internal complications from a lifelong struggle with dystonia. Brendan was born on April 28, 1973, in Middlebury, Vt., to Kristine Knapp Vittum and Nick Vittum. He was predeceased by Kristine and is survived…
The Parmelee Post: Jay Peak Makes Snow From Shredded Financial Documents
Powder researchers at Jay Peak Resort say they have developed new artificial snow-making technology that will revolutionize the winter sports industry and help resorts generate revenue during off-season months. Their patented “cash-flow snowblower” cannon can produce manmade snow in temperatures of up to 47 degrees Fahrenheit, potentially extending the ski season by several months. The…
Obituary: Erik Stavrand
It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of our father, Erik Stavrand, on November 21, 2016. Our father is joining our mother, his sister and his brother on the 30th anniversary of his brother’s passing. Erik married Grace Marie Gundersen November 12, 1950 in Valley Stream, New York. Dad served in the…
Two Film Geeks and a Podcast
If “Siskel & Ebert & the Movies” had been emceed by an improv comedy duo and recorded with beers nursed over a leisurely hour and a half, it might have sounded something like the podcast of Burlington residents Lincoln L. Hayes and Tim Bridge. “The What the Hell Are You Watching?! Podcast,” a casually structured…
Twin Peaks’ Cadien James Lake on Youth and Maturity
Following the release of Twin Peaks’ 2016 album, Down in Heaven, a judgment began floating around the music-sphere that the Chicago-based DIY rockers had “matured.” That’s a somewhat flawed narrative for two reasons. First, it implies that everything that came before the new release was immature. The band’s first two albums, Sunken and Wild Onion,…
North End Studios Seeks to Expand Into St. Joseph’s School
Old posters advertising the Vermont International Festival fill a notice board in Ben Bergstein and April Werner’s office in Burlington’s North End Studio A. Rows of whiteboards have been converted into monthly planners. Framed paintings and a map of the world decorate the rest of the room. North End Studios, on North Winooski Avenue, is…
Anachronist, Lost in the Corners
(State and Main Records, CD, digital download) On their first two releases, Montpelier’s Anachronist explored the nooks and crannies of indie rock’s jangly past. The scruffy likes of Uncle Tupelo, Dinosaur Jr. and Built to Spill left indelible imprints on the band’s 2012 debut EP, Row. On their 2014 full-length, Static and Light, a reconfigured…
In With the New: Two College-to-Statehouse Reps Prepare to Serve
Jay Hooper, a newly elected Democratic state representative from Brookfield, vowed not to wear any green blazers in the Statehouse this January. He doesn’t want to be mistaken for one of the middle school-age legislative pages in green jackets who roam the halls carrying messages between officials. It’s a reasonable concern for the lanky 23-year-old,…
Eastern Mountain Time, Back Home
(Self-released, digital download) Following their excellent 2015 self-titled debut, Eastern Mountain Time return with a five-song EP, Back Home. Sean Hood and company enlisted Wren Kitz for support on this new effort, recording the tracks in Kitz’ home studio over the course of 2016. Back Home is a stripped-down collection of sad-boy country. It reiterates…
Meet the Vermonter Who Gets Paid to Analyze Fantasy Sports
Name: Ken Crites Town: Shelburne Job: vice president of business development, fantasy sports analyst, RotoWire If you are one of the estimated 57 million North Americans who play fantasy sports, then you might think getting paid to play and write about the hobby is the coolest job ever. Shelburne’s Ken Crites agrees. “It really is…
Book Review: Shift by Marylen Grigas
The cover of Marylen Grigas’ first poetry collection is a blurry photo of the open road. It looks as if the driver shot it from inside the vehicle as he or she hurtled along the interstate at dawn. Above the smeary taillights of other vehicles, the book’s title, Shift, looms in a sulfurous-yellow sky like…
![The Flying Pig Bookstore Turns 20 [SIV469]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/episode469.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
The Flying Pig Bookstore Turns 20 [SIV469]
</iframe 11/26/16: For two decades, Elizabeth Bluemle and Josie Leavitt have been sharing their love of reading with customers of the Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne. These former New Yorkers originally opened their bookstore in Charlotte and relocated to Shelburne a decade ago. Many know Josie, the original Vermont Comedy Diva, for jump starting the…
Kickback Brewery Prepares for Launch
Joshua Smith, 34, homebrewed for almost a decade before deciding to launch a brewery from his garage in Westford*. An Essex native with a degree in community development and applied economics from the University of Vermont, Smith tapped into his brewing passion (pun intended) shortly after graduation. Come 2017, he’ll start distributing kegs — and…
Roots School Adds Permaculture Courses
At Roots School in Corinth, students learn traditional skills such as arrow making, animal tracking, hide tanning, wilderness self-reliance — and, soon, how to feed a homestead or community. Next year, Roots will expand its offerings with a collection of classes on how to cultivate crops and raise animals in fields and forests. “I was…
Hatchet Tap & Table Adds Sunday Brunch
On Sunday, November 27, Richmond’s Hatchet Tap and Table added Sunday brunch to its repertoire of seasonal menus, craft cocktails, local pours and housemade creemees. The first installment rang in the post-Thanksgiving holiday season with updated classics: pork-belly Benedicts, red flannel hash decked with Boyden Farm corned beef, and made-from-scratch cranberry granola with candied ginger.…
Resilience
“Will you go to Huntington for 50 bucks?” Having flagged me down, the thirtysomething man was speaking to me through my passenger-side window. On this unusually warm late November night, he was jacket-free, and his blue flannel shirt was crisp and clean, as were his blue jeans. He had tousled, sandy-blond hair and an easy…
Donny’s New York Pizza, Junior’s Rustico Close
As of mid-November, Chittenden County residents have two fewer places to order a pizza. In Winooski, the Michaelides family shuttered Donny’s New York Pizza & Sports Bar on November 11, ending 18 years of serving thin-crust pizzas and Greek-inflected fare. Thomas Hirchak Company is scheduled to auction the contents of the restaurant on Wednesday, November…
Allied
When I criticize a movie for its poorly fleshed-out characters, I sometimes get the response, “They don’t need depth. They’re iconic.” Fair enough. But a movie needs to earn “iconic” characters by being memorable in other ways — visually stunning, thematically resonant, devilishly twisty, something. Paying homage to movies that are iconic doesn’t wash as…
Rules Don’t Apply
In March, Warren Beatty will be 80. Eighteen years have passed since he last directed and starred in a film. That was Bulworth (1998), a political comedy that, let’s say, is unlikely to be among the movies for which he’ll be remembered. As I watched Beatty’s latest and possibly last project, I couldn’t help reflecting…
Free Will Astrology (11/30/16)
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): A journalist dared composer John Cage to “summarize himself in a nutshell.” Cage said, “Get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.” He might have added, “Avoid the nutshells that anyone tries to put you in.” This is always fun work to attend to, of course, but I especially…
Despite Challenges, More Private Docs Are Treating Opiate Addicts
Vermont officials are encouraging private physicians to treat addicts in an all-hands-on-deck battle against opioid abuse. But state sanctions against some of them illustrate the potential pitfalls of putting office docs on the front lines. Take Dr. Robert Penney. The Vermont Medical Practice Board found that the Burlington-based doctor prescribed the recovery drug buprenorphine even…
I Can’t Bear My Fiancé’s Family — Should I Get Married?
Dear Athena, My boyfriend proposed recently, and I am so excited to be with him. I love him a lot. But I can’t bear his family. We were visiting recently and I started having a political conversation with one of his cousins, and then his father got involved and his opinions annoyed me. We are…
Art Review: ‘Hard-Edge Cool,’ Shelburne Museum
A new exhibit at the Shelburne Museum is a far cry from the folk art for which the museum is famous, and demonstrates the broad curatorial possibilities of its contemporary Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education. “Hard-Edge Cool: The Routhier Collection of Mid-Century Prints” focuses on an aesthetic not often seen at any venue in…
Soundbites: The Last Mosh
As the old chestnut goes, all good things must come to an end. And this Saturday, December 3, after a 30-plus-year run as the oldest all-ages punk club in the country, beloved basement haunt 242 Main will host one final, sweaty, punk-rock bacchanalia … at least for now. While the show is billed as “The…
SafeArt Publishes a Curriculum for Healing
In the first chapter of A Curriculum of Courage: Making SafeArt, Chelsea artist, educator and advocate Tracy Penfield relates the story of the abusive relationship that dominated her life from ages 14 to 30. This cumulative trauma, combined with a lifetime of work in dance and textile arts, has informed her ongoing exploration of creative…
Letters to the Editor (11/30/16)
Bernie’s Next Book [Re “Manual for a Movement?” November 23]: Now that Sen. Bernie Sanders has written a political treatise, Our Revolution, he is ready to author a work of pure fiction. His novel will be called His Revolution, about a crass real estate tycoon from Manhattan who does what liberals have been unsuccessfully trying…
All in a Day Trip: Montréal’s Mile Ex Hood
Montréal’s Mile Ex, a petite neighborhood that borders Little Italy to the west, doesn’t really encourage wandering by eager visitors. Meandering down the streets that define the area’s borders — rue Clark, Avenue du Parc, rue Jean-Talon Ouest, and a set of railroad tracks that runs behind a Home Depot and parallel to Avenue Van…
In the Final Chapter, Keven’s Story Becomes Kay’s
With just weeks to live, 56-year-old Keven Pearce made a decision: He’d spend the rest of his days living as a woman. So it is that Kay Pearce, not Keven, is dying of terminal cancer at the McClure Miller VNA Respite House in Colchester. Pearce sports dangling earrings and clinking bracelets. A long, brunette wig…
571 Projects: An Art Curator Returns Home From NYC
In October, Sophie Bréchu-West quietly made her debut in the Vermont art scene. Not as an artist, but as a curator. The 36-year-old is originally from Bennington and most recently lived in New York City. Over the past few months, she was the impetus behind multiple exhibitions of work by Brooklyn artist Sally Gil, whose…
Mitzi in the Middle: How Johnson Prevailed in the House Speaker Contest
As Rep. Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) traveled around the state over the past few weeks, winning over House Democrats in her bid for speaker, she says she didn’t make any promises about committee assignments. “I was asked. Some people hinted. One person asked flat out,” she says. “I said, ‘Look, my entire campaign is based…
Vermont Inmates Take to the Kitchen With Farm-to-Prison Program
On a spitting-rain November evening, Brian Bertenshaw stood at a stainless steel table trimming beets. With deft movements, he lopped off the roots’ spiny tops and tossed their bleeding red bodies into a wide metal mixing bowl. His forearms were scarred with the shallow nicks and burns that are common among line cooks and other…
Old Route Two Spirits Is Coming to Barre
In Barre, a new distillery is coming to town. High in the quarried hills of Websterville, Old Route Two Spirits is slowly taking form in the same industrial park that’s home to Vermont Creamery and the Vermont Foodbank. Co-owners Adam Overbay, Jennifer West and Ryan Dumperth say Old Route Two’s focus will be on rum,…
